Interview with Tad Williams

Is the world you created for Otherland a representation of what you believe will come to pass in the future, or is it created purely as a setting for Otherland?(Question supplied by a visitor to the Orbit web-site)

I think certain elements are fairly realistic and even likely, but I've manipulated things for the benefit of my story, so I've actually made the world more like it is now than it probably will be in seventy years, just so I don't have to spend too much time explaining things outside the central story. (For one thing, it's possible that something like genetic research or quantum jumps in computer speed could literally turn human life in a hundred different directions.) But I think the ubiquity of the VR interface is likely, and I think the transparency of the technology is almost certain.

Do you find it easier to create purely fictional worlds such as Osten Ard where you had complete creative freedom, or worlds based on the present Earth where you are constrained by the dictates of history? (Question supplied by a visitor to the Orbit web-site)

In some ways it's more work to make up an entire world, of course. On the other hand, I never had to worry about whether I was completely mislocating something in Osten Ard so gruesomely that someone who had actually been there would laugh at me in public and say, ‘What a fool!’ So, I guess it's easier writing completely made-up worlds.

What influence/involvement do you have with the production of cover art for your books? Also, what do you think of the cover art used on fantasy books in general? (Questions supplied by a visitor to the Orbit web-site)

I have more say than most authors, in that my publishers and I talk about it quite a bit, I have a veto power that's never been tested, and I have a background in art myself. That said, I've been so happy with most of my covers - there ARE exceptions, but I won't go into that here - that there hasn't been much to say, except about general layout and design issues.

As for fantasy covers in general, I don't actually LIKE representative covers much - that is, covers which are actual illustrations of characters or scenes from the story. I think it takes away from readers’ ability to visualize, and also has an unfortunate connotation of ‘deep genre’, on a par with romance novels and other next-to-the-cash-register types of books. However, since that's what people put on fantasy novels these days, thank God for Michael Whelan and a few others in his general league, who can turn a representative cover into high art.

Why did you choose fantasy fiction as a starting point for your writing?

Although fantasy has always been something I liked, starting in childhood, I read lots of kinds of stuff. But I thought I would have a better grasp of the form with fantasy, and a better idea of what I was doing well or not doing well. Then, once you begin to develop a name, you tend to want to keep writing for the same readers, or at least I do.

What led you to make the significant conceptual change of fantasy writing from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn to the Otherland series? (Question supplied by a visitor to the Orbit web-site)

As I've mentioned before - a lot of people wonder about this - it doesn't seem as much of a jump to me, because I grew up reading both fantasy and sf interchangeably. (I read other things too, and some of them come out in my work, but we'll leave that aside for now.) Most of my favourite writers in my field actually wandered in and out of both genres without caring much - Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin, just to name a few. So to me it just seemed like trying a slightly different palette. And it still seems that way.